Christopher Walken (born Ronald Walken on March 31, 1943), is an Academy Award-winning American film and theatre actor. He was born in the Astoria section of the New York City borough of Queens to a German father and Scottish-born mother. Walken has been married to casting director Georgianne Thon Walken since 1969. Walken initially trained as a dancer in musical theatre before moving on to more serious roles in theatre and then film. He has a considerable body of work in theatre, with over 100 plays to his credit. He won the Clarence Derwent award for his performance in The Lion in Winter in 1966 and an Obie for his 1975 performance in Kid Champion. He has played the main role in a number of Shakespeare plays — notably Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Coriolanus. He tried his hand at writing and directing with the short five minute film Popcorn Shrimp in 2001. He also wrote and acted the main role in a play about Elvis Presley titled "Him" in 1995. He has also appeared in over one hundred movies and television shows since 1953, including The Deer Hunter (1978), The Dead Zone (1983), A View to a Kill (1985), Batman Returns (1992), True Romance (1993), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Catch Me If You Can (2002) and in classic TV series such as Kojak and The Naked City. His films have grossed a cumulative North American profit of over USD 1.8 billion. He was George Lucas' second choice for Han Solo after Harrison Ford. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Deer Hunter (1978), where he played a disturbed Vietnam vet alongside Robert De Niro. He was nominated again in 2002 for Catch Me if You Can (2002).He has also starred in three music videos. His first video role was as the Angel of Death in Madonna's 1993 "Bad Girl" video, the second appearance was in Skid Row's Breakin' Down video, and the third one in Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice" video in 2001. In addition to this, he has voiced characters in a number of video games.%D%AWalken first appeared on the screen when he was ten years old in the 1953 television show The Wonderful John Acton as the show's narrator. Over the next twenty years, he would find his acting ground in television, an experimental film, Me and My Brother, and a thriving career in the theatre.Walken played a small role opposite Sean Connery in Sidney Lumet's The Anderson Tapes (1971). Here he plays in what is essentially a heist movie with a nod towards seventies preoccupations with social surveillance. In 1972, Walken played his first starring role in The Mind Snatchers. He plays a borderline sociopathic American soldier, Private James Reese, stationed in Germany, in a science fiction film which deals with mind control and normalization.1977's Annie Hall has Walken playing the strange and suicidally fixated brother of Annie Hall (Diane Keaton); this Academy Award-winning film directed by Woody Allen is often cited by Walken and others as the first film that brought the actor and his unusual qualities to the attention of the mainstream viewing public. 1978 saw the release of a western Shoot the Sun Down which had originally been filmed in 1976 and which also co-starred Margot Kidder just before she rose to fame in the Superman films. Walken won his first and only Academy Award for best supporting actor with his performance in the controversial 1978 film, The Deer Hunter. He plays Nick Chevotarevich, a young Pittsburgh steelworker with a poetic bent who is emotionally and spiritually destroyed by his combat experience of war in Vietnam. Walken's performance is notable for his transformation from a sensitive, gentle character to a self-destructive, zoned out automaton, high on heroin and gambling with his life at Russian roulette. To get the hollowed-out look for his character, Walken ate nothing but bananas and rice for a week. Walken's first film of the 1980s was the scandalous and controversial Heaven's Gate (1980). This film led to the financial ruin of United Artists, hastened the end of directorial control of films in Hollywood and offended many in a climate marked by a return to political conservatism with the election of Ronald Reagan. The film received extremely negative reviews in the USA, but was seen in a more favourable light by European critics and a 2004 re-release in selected cinemas in the USA and Australia has attracted a more positive reevaluation of the artistic merits of the film. Although Walken's role does not provide him with the opportunities offered by Michael Cimino's previous film The Deer Hunter, his cold and alien menace as a highly efficient hired gun is unexpectedly offset by a romantic vulnerability and a subtly amusing take on his character Nate Champion's aspirations to social betterment.%Dfter Heavens Gate, Walken starred in the 1981 action-adventure The Dogs of War filmed by famous technicolour cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Walken plays schoolteacher Johnny Smith in David Cronenberg's 1983 movie, The Dead Zone. After lying in a coma for five years, Smith awakes to find he has psychic powers. Walken later spoofed this role in a sketch in Saturday Night Live titled "Ed Glosser: Trivial Psychic". Walken's performance in this film is often regarded as one of his best. Walken played the role of a James Bond villain in A View to a Kill (1985). He plays opposite Roger Moore as Max Zorin, the psychotic villain, who runs a horse stable which suspiciously always produces winning horses. Walken dyed his hair blond to befit Zorin's origins as a Nazi experiment).At Close Range (1986) has Walken starring as Brad Whitewood, a psychotic rural Pennsylvania family crime boss, who tries to bring his two estranged sons (played by real-life brothers Sean Penn and Chris Penn) into his criminal world. Based on a true story about the Bruce Johnston crime family which operated in eastern Pennsylvania during the late 1970s, this film has received much critical acclaim over the years. %D%AWalken had a role in The Comfort of Strangers (1990). This art house film, directed by Paul Schrader, who scripted Taxi Driver, has the notable distinction of providing a role for Walken that disturbed even him. He plays a decadent Italian aristocrat, Robert, who lives with his wife (Helen Mirren) in Venice. Robert has extreme sexual tastes and murderous tendencies. Walken, sporting Armani suits, provides an understated performance that combines charm, evil and sudden and shocking violence. King of New York (1990) was a film by noted independent New York film maker Abel Ferrara that has attracted both a cult following and the attention of serious film theorists (for example Nicole Brenez. Walken stars as mysterious but ruthless New York City drug dealer Frank White, recently released from prison and set on reclaiming his criminal territory by any means necessary. White also has moral pretensions, acting as a kind of a Robin Hood figure. In this film Walken has the opportunity and screen time to demonstrate his range and his experimental abilities as an actor.In 1992, Walken was in Batman Returns, a film with immense success at the box office and still has quite a following. Here, Walken plays greedy millionare industrialist Max Schreck, who attempts to get Oswald Cobblepot elected as mayor of Gotham City for his own personal gain. Despite being the only normal one of the villains, it is he who is the most evil, as he was responsible for Selina Kyle's transformation into Catwoman and he manipulated both the Penguin and the citizens of Gotham City in an attempt to build a Power plant which steals, instead of supplies, Gotham's power. His character can be seen as a reflection of Bruce Wayne.Walken plays a scene opposite Dennis Hopper in True Romance (1993). This so-called 'Sicilian scene' has become a cult favourite and is frequently hailed by critics — professional and amateur alike — as the best scene in the film. This scene alone is the subject of four commentaries on the DVD attesting to its cult status. After an exchange of dialogue (penned by Quentin Tarantino) Walken's character, Sicilian gangster Vincenzo Coccotti, summarily executes Hopper's character after deliberate provocation by the latter.Pulp Fiction is a 1994 Quentin Tarantino film, which has received many accolades. One part of the movie, involving Walken, contains another frequently quoted cult scene. Here Walken offers a slightly disturbing, but nonetheless amusing turn as a Vietnam veteran, Captain Koons, who in a long speech delivers a watch to a small boy from his dead father. Koons explains just how the watch had been hidden during his long years in a prisoner of war camp. Later in 1994, Walken had a part in 'A Business Affair. This is one of Walken's few outings in a principal role in a romantic comedy. He plays Vanni Corso, an American publisher living in London who falls for one of his authors, Kate Swallow, played by French actress Carole Bouquet. He also dances a tango, although it is difficult to see much detail due to the way it is filmed.Walken had six acting roles in 1995. Wild Side (1995) is made by Donald Cammell who directed the experimental landmark film of sixties counter-culture Performance with Mick Jagger. Cammell removed his name from the 1995 studio cut of Wild Side and a far superior 'director's cut' was only released posthumously in 2000. The film boasts one of Walken's most extreme performance. In one notable and lengthy scene his character, international money launderer Bruno Buckingham, high on drugs, graphically threatens to rape his chauffeur, an undercover cop.The Prophecy (1995) is a horror film directed by Gregory Widen, also featuring Elias Koteas, Virginia Madsen and Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer, Walken takes on the role of the evil Archangel Gabriel. In this account, Gabriel has rebelled against God because God favors humans over the angels. The film and its two sequels (1998, 2000) has attracted a cult following amongst Walken's fans. Two further sequels without Walken have been made - one was released on DVD in 2005. Walken's over the top but nuanced performance in these films is a favourite with many fans. The Addiction (1995) is another horror film, this one directed by cult director Abel Ferrara and written by Nicholas St. John, deals with modern vampires in New York City. The writer and director use vampirism as a metaphor for the Christian doctrine of original sin, and Walken plays an ancient vampire who has learned to control his addiction for blood - an outward manifestation of the inward hunger - to the degree that he is able to function fairly normally in society.In the 1996 film Last Man Standing, Walken plays the roll of Hickey, a sadistic henchman who kills for the sheer joy of it. Last Man Standing is director Walter Hill's contribution to a collection of films inspired by the novel Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. Walken had a notable music video performance in 2001 with Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice. Directed by Spike Jonze, it won six MTV awards in 2001 and also won best video of all time in April 2002, in a list of the top 100 videos of all time, compiled from a survey of musicians, directors and music industry figures conducted by a UK music TV channel VH1. In this video, Walken performs a tap dance around the lobby of the Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles. Walken also helped choreograph the dance.Walken played Frank Abagnale, Sr. in Catch Me If You Can, a 2002 film by Steven Spielberg. It is inspired by the true story of Frank Abagnale, Jr. (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), the legendary con artist who managed to pass himself off as several identities and forge millions of dollars worth of checks, with an FBI agent (Carl Hanratty, played by Tom Hanks) hot on his trail. Christopher Walken plays Frank Jr.'s father, in a difficult and emotionally charged role. His portrayal earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Man on Fire is a 2004 film directed by Tony Scott, starring Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Radha Mitchell, Giancarlo Giannini and Walken. It is a remake of the 1987 film Man on Fire. The film was originally based on a series of books by author A. J. Quinnell. Man on Fire loosely follows the first of the series about a former Marine and Foreign Legion soldier turned mercenary. The remake was released on April 23, 2004 in the U.S. and drew $23 million USD in its opening weekend.Most recently he played the role of Morty in the comedy Click. Walken has attracted strong cult following as an actor. One reason for this is the type of films he has appeared in, for example gangster and science fiction/fantasy films, or films by directors with their own cult following such as Abel Ferrara, David Cronenberg and Quentin Tarantino. But more important factors are his odd appearance, his quirky mannerisms, his unique delivery (since high school he has kept the habit of eliminating the punctuation from his scripts) and his ability to exude menace. This cult status is demonstrated by the number of photoshopped images of Walken on the net, the frequency of impersonations either by amateurs or other professional actors (notably Kevin Spacey, Kevin Pollak, and Jay Mohr), the invention of fictitious stories about his activities and the invention of various things he might have said. There is also the fan practice of rote reciting some of his speeches from film - for example True Romance, Pulp Fiction and The Prophecy (see descriptions below). There are even short films and plays which use his persona.Walken has been featured in a fad on ytmnd.com, which generally uses songs with the word "walking" and substitutes Walken in the picture related to the song. As of August 2005, he was the subject of a hoax Presidential campaign. A website, Walken2008.com, presented numerous politically charged quotes from Walken, which his publicist dismissed as "100% not true." The Urban Legends Reference Pages list the site as a fake. This hoax was perpetrated by the Internet message board General Mayhem. Ironically though, in the 2005 film, Wedding Crashers, Walken plays the Treasury Secretary of the United States who, in the motion picture, is considering a run for the presidency.%D%A%D%A%D%A %D%A
